There are several key things I'd like to address in this posting. First, a bit about the recent NIU shootings, and the ramifications for Second Amendment rights and psychiatric drug side effect awareness. Second, the shootings providing ample fodder for our city's Golden Boy Obama and the bill recently introduced to Congress by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Obama heartily endorses proposing a ban on handgun ownership. Third, a dovetailing look at Obama himself, heralded as the beacon of hope for change and the 'voice of our generation'...is this view, held by so many 'hip, aware, progressive' 18-25 year olds across the nation, entirely justified?
As you are all probably well aware by this point, 27 year old Steven Kazmierczak open-fired on a geology lecture at NIU (where he was formally a student) on Thursday, killing five people and injuring several others before taking his own life. The most recent news reports attempt to make sense of his motives, referring to the disconnect between his "mousy" and "reasonable" personality and his "disturbing tattoos" and stint in a psychiatric facility where he was forced by his family to take medications he actively resisted starting. Reports imply that there is a link between the shootings and Kazmierczak stopping his medication regiment. Check out the story here: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NIU_SHOOTING?SITE=WSAW&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT. I'm going to be doing some more research on the pharmaceutical industry in the future; look for blog entries to follow with my findings. I'd also appreciate any links or input from readers if you've looked into any of these issues!
Barack Obama released a statement of consolation for the victims and their families, vowing to eradicate violence in our nation. No short wonder he is hailing the Global Poverty Act, devised by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This act, on the surface providing billions of dollars in relief aid to impoverished nations in Africa, also bootstraps a provision banning handguns unilaterally on the federal level. Read http://obama.senate.gov/press/080213-obama_hagel_can_1/ for the story from the Senate's website. No mention of the additional provisions of the Act are discussed, and, of course, no Senator is going to want to go on record stating that they want to keep the world's citizens in poverty.
Two interesting sidenotes here:
1) Hillary Clinton, in a surprising show of support for Second Amendment rights, spoke to a group while campaigning in Wisconsin this past week about her support for gun ownership, stating that while she believes there should be controls on the obtaining of weapons by the mentally ill and criminals, she is supportive of the right to bear arms in general (see the last three paragraphs of this AP article: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CLINTON_WISCONSIN?SITE=WSAW&SECTI...).
2) Our current President has provided billion dollar public health campaigns in Africa to control malaria, AIDS, and other health crises. While these programs are widely lauded, and certainly measurably successful as well as needed to combat extreme poverty and disease, the methods by which the government determines which countries are worthy of such aid are heavily political. This aid is doled out based not on perceived/actual need but how strategic the country will be both for natural resource acquisition and high-level government cooperation (i.e. how easily our government can control the running of their nations).
...Not to mention the fact that an estimated 37 million Americans are below the poverty line! And where are the programs to help these people, to lift our OWN nation out of its spiraling descent into recession and economic collapse? The tax relief, the widespread availability of affordable housing, decent jobs, etc etc? Obama, and the rest of the government honchos right on up to the President, can cite our country's benevolence (instituted for our own material gain) while sending billions of homegrown, hard-earned American tax dollars overseas to further fulfill the government's strategic worldwide agenda. So much for "Change We Can Count On".
If you want to believe the Obama hype about ending the war, troop withdrawal, and freedom, I urge to use his senate webpage to research his voting (or calculated NON-voting, as the case may be) record on several key issues:
http://obama.senate.gov/votes/
An anti-war senator that votes repeatedly to continue to fund the war for the past few years? Who voted yea in favor of the Patriot Act provisions? On that last one, he does have some votes supporting restrictive provisions on updates to the Act, all VERY VERY recent. Pretty calculating, and contrary to prior positions he held before his Presidential campaign was enacted.
Students and young people need a candidate who doesn't pay lip service to change, but who makes his progressive voice heard through supporting or shooting down legislation appropriately (like Ron Paul in the House, who uses every opportunity to be in Washington voting down Patriot Act and warmongering bills). Obama is not the stalwart of freedom that he, or anyone else, claims him to be. He was lauded his first year on the Senate for his aggressive aims to end corruption and streamline government. Let's hope that if he secures the nomination for the Democratic party, he can pull himself out of bed with the good old boys long enough to remember why he wanted to be a part of the establishment from the start: to change it from the inside.
I'll also try to flesh out some more on these topics in future posts. Stay tuned, do research, get INFORMED.
Thanks,
Jessica
myspace.com/artistsforawareness911
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